A proposed testing program for an experimental, 20-kilowatt nuclear reactor — and its eventual dismantling and defueling after a planned two-year run — won’t harm the environment, the Department of Energy reiterated this week in a final environmental review for the project.
In a proposed finding of no significant impact notice published Tuesday on its website, DOE concluded that carrying out the proposed Microreactor Applications Research, Validation and Evaluation Project (MARVEL) project at Idaho National Laboratory wouldn’t pose a threat to the human environment.
DOE said in its findings that the MARVEL program would use existing facilities, including for eventual storage of spent fuel and the small reactor core itself, and that the “risks associated with the proposed action are well-defined.”
DOE plans to operate MARVEL at Idaho’s Transient Reactor Test Facility (TREAT). The microreactor will be fueled by high-assay, low-enriched uranium in the form of 36 uranium zirconium hydride pins. After MARVEL’s test run, the spent fuel will be pulled from the reactor and stored either at the Transient Reactor Test Facility or elsewhere in the Materials and Fuels Complex — the part of the high-desert lab where the Transient Reactor Test Facility is located. That’s according to the final environmental assessment for the project.
DOE published the draft environmental assessment in January and accepted public comments until Feb. 9.
Deactivating and decommissioning of the tiny reactor will have to be juggled alongside operations of the TREAT Reactor with which MARVEL will essentially be roommates. The TREAT Reactor, these days a testbed for accident tolerant fuels, won’t be allowed to operate while personnel are decommissioning MARVEL, and vice versa, DOE wrote in the final environmental assessment.
MARVEL’s spent fuel, and its deactivated core, will be a drop in the bucket for waste management at Idaho. The site handles spent fuel from the nuclear Navy and stores some 900,000 gallons of sodium bearing waste for eventual treatment by the oft-delayed Integrated Waste Treatment Unit, among other things.
Research and development for advanced nuclear is high on the Joe Biden administration’s list of priorities for the industry. Both Nuclear Regulatory Commission chair Christopher Hanson and Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm said this week at a conference held by the industry trade group Nuclear Energy Institute that advanced reactors were key to the administration’s climate agenda.
Meanwhile, public comments about MARVEL showcased the usual mix of enthusiasm for nuclear science, consternation over environmental concerns and, occasionally, informed criticism from people with professional nuclear experience.
Junaid Razvi, a nuclear engineer who capped a 40-year career with General Atomics in 2018 and is now a fellow with the U.S. Nuclear Industry Council, wondered whether either Idaho National Laboratory or TRIGA, a General Atomics joint venture, needed more data about the sodium-cooled uranium zirconium hydride pins MARVEL is supposed to use. Neither party has ever fabricated fuel exactly like that planned for MARVEL, Razvi said.
In another public comment, a retired Idaho National Laboratory scientist, who now styles himself a technical gadfly, blasted MARVEL-type reactors as an expensive gimmick.
MARVEL and its ilk are “suitable for powering only tiny, cost-is-no-object, niche applications,” Darryl Siemer, the retired Idaho National Laboratory consulting scientist, wrote in his public comment.
